SHRED OREGON DAY 9: OAKRIDGE DAY 3: Beware the underbrush

What the heck? Summer gets so busy I can't even post some pics and memories from a fabulous vacation?  More than a month after the fact, here are the highlights from day 9 of the Shred Oregon vacay.

We had one more day in Oak Ridge, so, upon the recommendation of the Mercantile folks, we we planned a big out and back along the Middle Fork of the Willamette River and up and around Moon Point and Youngs Rock. The first order of business was breakfast.

 The bakery was not usually open on Mondays but they were experimenting.  Tasty.

We drove out around Hells Creek Reservoir (longish drive) to Sand Prairie Campground (complete and total misnomer - these Oregonians have no clue about prairies!!! ha ha).  From there we started riding a fun trail in the underbrush along the river. 

 Is this an Oregon prairie?

Drew was more than worried about the possibility (err, certainty) of poison ivy in this luscious environ, so we bailed off the trail to the pavement.  From there we turned to forest road 2129 for about 4 or 5 miles of super fun exciting gravel road climb. 

The road does not look steep.  It wasn't really, just long and monotonous with nothing much to break it up except my frequent rest and stretching breaks.

We had many miles to drive to our camp spot for this evening so we didn't get all the way up to Moon Point, but we did catch a nice panorama at the end of our climb.

 It's like we are posing for a photo or something. 

 Jean Luc enjoys the view.  It reminds him of is home planet.

We came back down the fire road (yes, crazy silly cross country riders working all that way on the gravel road climb only to go BACK DOWN it!)  to somewhere that we could cut over to the Youngs Rock trail.

That trail was great.  The closest thing to Utah-type riding (drier, more open) that we had done on this trip except the trees were WAY bigger.

There was the small problem on the steep downhill of Drew's brakes not working.  This forced him to have to go too slow and even walk at the very end.  A shame because it was a pretty fun downhill.

Over all, a small amount of single track for the amount of road and climbing we had done, but since we needed the training, all the better. 

We solar-showered up at the van and motored into Oakridge for one last resupply stop before driving a couple of hours toward Crater Lake for Day 10.